Good morning, RVA! It's 52 °F, and the rest of today looks pretty great. Get ready for highs in the 60s, some sun, some clouds, and all the reasons in the world to wear your coolest fall jacket.
Water cooler
Two small City Council updates for this fine Monday. First, Council will have a special meeting at 4:00 PM to “set out Council’s assignments of the projected Fiscal Year 2018 year-end General Fund surplus.” While the surplus was north of $10 million, Council rules stipulate that 50% go toward the rainy day fund and 40% go towards infrastructure projects (can someone point me to this ordinance or resolution?). Get excited, because now’s the time when we watch our elected officials get really intense over loose change while they’re simultaneously about to pass an ordinance to maintain the oppressive Recession-era real estate tax cuts. Roll back those tax cuts to pre-Recession levels and suddenly we can actually, you know, pay for things. Second, today’s the regularly scheduled quarterly meeting of the Education Compact Team, and you can find the agenda here. Looks like they’ll discuss the plan for state-level advocacy, local funding models (e.g. property tax???), and the RPS strategic plan.
This stat, from a Mark Bowes report in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, is hard to believe: “Every day last year at least one gun on average was reported stolen from someone's car or truck in the Richmond metropolitan area.” What?! Why are people keeping guns in their cars?? Don’t do that! Personal opinion: Guns are terrible. Factual statement: If you can’t be bothered to safely and securely store your deadly weapon you shouldn’t have one.
Charlotte Rene Woods in Richmond BizSense has word of a cohousing condo project in Manchester that, if I’m being honest, fills me with anxiety. My chest tightens just thinking about having to make dinner a few times a month for a couple dozen neighbors. Would they find hot dogs and popcorn acceptable? Because...that’s what I’m making for dinner tonight.
The RTD has a long list of where Rep. Dave Brat and Abigail Spanberger stand on a variety of issues. Basically, and you already know this, Brat supports any and all Trump policies while Spanberger does not. Here’s a laugher from the environment section, though: “[Brat] believes that free market economies lead to clean air and clean water.” 🙄
Today at 3:00 PM, the Mayor will kick off the City’s Census 2020 work. I know that the census sounds like literally the most boring thing in all the land, but it’s ultra important. Lots and lots of federal money is based on how many folks live in your city, so we need to make sure everyone is counted!
Gerrymandering sucks, and we are lucky to have OneVirginia2021 around to fight for redistricting reform. Rebecca Neale has a column in Richmond Magazine—and this is one of the few times where both-sidesism does apply—about how Democrats and Republicans can’t be trusted to do their own redistricting.
Yes! Via /r/rva, a stack of pictures from this past weekend’s Richmond Zombie Walk!
Yesterday, former VCU (basketball) Ram Mo Alie-Cox caught his first (football) touchdown in the NFL. The highlight is pretty great and worth your time.
This morning's longread
HOW TO REMEMBER ANYTHING FOREVER-ISH
Here’s an educational and interactive comic about an easy way to really, really remember things.
Not only are common practices, like lectures, cramming, and re-reading boring, science has shown they don’t even work well. But what if I said there’s a way to learn that’s evidence-based and fun? What if I said there’s a memory card game you can play, for 20 minutes a day, to store anything you chose into long-term memory, forever? And the name of this game is...SPACED REPETITION.
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